Originally Posted by
Interflug
Since this is the clueless speculation thread:
Why could it not be both?
An engine malfunction and an error of the air defence?
737 turns back with engine failure, one engine on fire, looking like a rocket in the night sky.
Now heading TOWARD Tehran coming from a western direction.
SAM batteries around Tehran on highest alert, expecting incoming retaliation strike, less than two hours after they started a volley of rockets toward US bases in Iraq.
...
Originally Posted by
Avman
Actually, quite a plausible scenario!
I agree. If you've ever seen compressor stalls at night, they can make the engine look like it is in afterburner.
I can see where the gap between the last ADS-B position and the debris field implies a possible right turn back toward the field. But this may have been after an initial explosion as the plane fluttered down out of control in flames. Kinda like the story that has already run about how 'the pilot' avoided the madrassa and crashed the plane into a soccer field instead.
A journalist from an opposition party media operation claims to have verified the turn back to the field through his online forensics:
